Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found a new mechanism that explains how certain immune cells are activated to create protective antibodies against infections or pathological antibodies such as those present ...

Lupus is a disease where the immune system attacks healthy cells of the body. This leads to progressive damage of different tissues and organs. The classical characteristic of the disease is the so-called butterfly rash in ...

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered how the virulent food-borne bacteria Listeria monocytogenes induces infected immune cells to sabotage their own defensive response. The studies offer insight into host-pathogen ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Rare variants in the gene coding of an enzyme that controls the activity of a key immune cell occur more often in people with autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 diabetes, Harvard researchers ...

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are viruses that at some point in the past inserted themselves into the nuclear genome of a host's germ cell. Once integrated in a germ cell the virus would be passed on from one generation ...

A multi-institutional research team has found that rare variants in the gene coding an enzyme that controls the activity of a key immune cell occur more frequently in individuals with autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid ...

Beer tested in a new study, including some brands labeled "low-gluten," contains levels of hordein, the form of gluten present in barley, that could cause symptoms in patients with celiac disease (CD), the autoimmune condition ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have identified a cellular genetic signature that predicts prognosis in two different autoimmune diseases. It is hoped the findings could one day help to guide therapy and might also reveal new ...

An international research consortium including scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) has identified a new genetic link to the systemic form of scleroderma. Researchers believe ...

Autoimmune disease

Autoimmune diseases arise from an overactive immune response of the body against substances and tissues normally present in the body. In other words, the body really attacks its own cells. This may be restricted to certain organs (e.g. in thyroiditis) or involve a particular tissue in different places (e.g. Goodpasture's disease which may affect the basement membrane in both the lung and the kidney). The treatment of autoimmune diseases is typically with immunosuppression—medication which decreases the immune response.